Backup problem

Recently had an expensive failure. Had to have my motherboard and processor replaced. The hard drive was OK. While in the shop they reloaded
Windows 7 pro. My question is was this the correct way, as I had a Macrium Free backup available with the rescue disc? Now I have to reload
all my programs. They did tell me they were not sure about backups and how to reinstal from these backups! I did try to the backup and it gave me a
message that this was successful but after exiting the Macrium backup it said a problem had occurred.
By changing the motherboard is the hard drive affected in any way?
Any thoughts please.
Regards
Dave

If all they did was replace the motherboard and the processor, there was no need to reload Windows.

Assuming that there were differences between the old and new motherboards, they could have simply downloaded and installed the correct drivers. If they put in a motherboard that was equal to the old motherboard, then there would probably not have been any need to update any drivers. But you'll know about the drivers simply by looking in Device Manager -- you'll see what is working and what isn't.

I don't believe you'll need to update anything if the processor changes, but I'm not certain about that.

I'm not sure why they reloaded Windows. Were you getting a different version of Windows installed? That's the only reason to "reload" Windows.

As I understand your situation, here's all they needed to do:

1. Power down.

2. Remove the hard drive.

3. Replace the motherboard and processor.

4. Reinstall the hard drive.

5. Power up the computer and check Device Manager to make sure everything is working. If anything isn't working, install the correct drivers for those devices.

Sounds to me like they didn't know what they were doing, and they reloaded Windows unnecessarily.

Was the new motherboard the same as the old one? If the new Motherboard has a different chipset the OS may not boot. I would have expected that the Macrium restore wouldn't have faulted though unless you have an efi hard drive and the Bios is not set to efi or vice versa.

Clean installing Windows on a PC that has had it's main components replaced is ALWAYS NECESSARY, especially from a
tech repair shop perspective. Now you can take the image you created and restore it if you so choose.
...And deal with the issues that will certainly arise when the drivers on the HD don't jive with those devices on the newly replaced mainboard.

No professional repair shop in their right mind would not do a clean install.

DRIVE IMAGINGInvest a little time and energy in a well thought out BACKUP regimen and you will have minimal down time, and headache.

If you take a step up and use bare metal restore capable imaging software then an image restore can survive a motherboard change pretty easily (or if one is using XP there are tools to accomplish this). Macrium might have that option in their paid version, EaseUS does, Shadow Protect does, Acronis has a optional plugin one can buy, etc.
Otherwise in general, free versions or versions without the extra plugin won't be up to the task.

The success on restoring to a different motherboard is hard to predict. I have been able to restore using Acronis to a new motherboard and CPU with no issues whatsoever, using Acronis TI with no add-ons. On the other hand, with the Acronis add-on, I have failed to have a VM, using a restored image, booting, which is something that should have happened with no issues at all.

My advice would be for you to backup what you have and give restore a try.

It is usually, though not always, possible to migrate an existing Windows installation to new hardware manually (though an imaging application that handles all the details itself is obviously far more convenient). One notable exception is when the new hardware's disk controller is incompatible with the existing system's drivers (if you know this is a possibility beforehand you can replace the drivers in the existing system with the generic Windows installation drivers which should work on ANY hardware to avoid being unable even to boot up on the new hardware; once again, a imaging application that includes good transfer capabilities should do all this for you).

But, as CLiNT noted, even if you can boot (perhaps only in Safe Mode) when doing this manually you'll have a lot of driver replacing to do before getting things at least mostly straightened out. If I had what was necessary to perform a new, clean install and reinstall the applications I needed and the data to go with them that's the route I'd take.